


I'll Be Keeping You Safe

by xenoglossy



Category: Dangan Ronpa
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2018-03-24 16:55:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3776257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xenoglossy/pseuds/xenoglossy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A supposedly straightforward scavenging trip takes a turn for the disastrous, and Kirigiri and Mukuro spend the night together in an abandoned house.</p><p>(Post-Dangan Ronpa IF.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Be Keeping You Safe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VampirePaladin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VampirePaladin/gifts).



It was supposed to be a normal scavenging trip—as straightforward as these things ever were. The scouting party that had gone out the night before had reported no sign of Ultimate Despair in the area, no traps, no wild animals, nothing that should prove any more dangerous than the environment was in and of itself. Even so, Kirigiri felt a swell of relief when Ikusaba volunteered to be her partner for the trip. Just in case.

They set off in the morning with their food rations—scant, hence the need for the expedition—and their makeshift cloth masks to protect them from the air, for all the good that did. (Kirigiri wished that she had eye protection as well; Togami, Fukawa, and Yamada may have complained about the oily film that covered their glasses whenever they went outside, but as far as she was concerned, they were the lucky ones.) That was all they brought with them; travelling light meant you could get farther before getting tired, and with any luck they’d have a lot to carry on their way back.

Ikusaba was silent at first as the two made their way along the road that cut through the untended rice fields. She didn’t seem to have mastered the art of making unnecessary conversation. It was hard sometimes to reconcile this silent girl with the bubbly, outgoing person Kirigiri had briefly known as Junko Enoshima—Ikusaba had told Kirigiri once that her sister had given her a script, but surely she'd had to ad-lib a little?

Not that Kirigiri herself had room to criticize. If she'd been someone more like Naegi, she would know the right thing to say to breach the silence between them, something that would draw Ikusaba out and make her feel at ease. If she were, even, Asahina or Maizono, she would be cheerful and determined enough to push past any initial awkwardness. It was funny, really—they could talk about lost memories and dead parents, but a bit of small talk to pass the time on a long walk was beyond them both.

Finally, she said, "It seems like a waste—all these abandoned rice fields, and we're going in search of a grocery store that still has canned and dried foods."

"I don't know anything about rice cultivation," Ikusaba said. "Do you?"

"No," Kirigiri admitted. If only they'd had an Ultimate Farmer in their ranks. "But there are vegetables, too. Those might be easier..."

And there they went, discussing logistics and practicalities again, and Kirigiri felt oddly disappointed, as if she'd been hoping for something else. But that didn't make any sense, did it?

***

They reached the town in the midafternoon, hopefully with enough sunlight left that they wouldn't have too far to go in the dark on the way home. It was a small town, but its one supermarket, a little way out along the highway, still had edible food, so they took some plastic bags from the bagging area at the front and loaded them with all the canned and dried goods they could reasonably carry—which was, of course, much more for Ikusaba than for Kirigiri. Kirigiri watched her heft the heavy bags, oddly fascinated. Ikusaba's slight build had none of the obvious power of Oogami's, and yet she was nearly as strong. Of course, her strength not being immediately apparent could be an asset to her on the battlefield—Kirigiri knew little of war, but she was well aware of the value of being underestimated by one's opponents.

Ikusaba glanced over at her, frowning. "Is something wrong?"

"No," said Kirigiri. Had she been staring? "I was just thinking, that's all."

There was a moment's silence, and Kirigiri thought Ikusaba might ask her what she had been thinking about (for which she would have had no good answer), but Ikusaba just said, "Well, we should go. Before we lose the light."

"Right," Kirigiri said, picking up her grocery bags.

They headed out, back along the highway and then onto the smaller local roads through the fields. She and Ikusaba still didn't talk much, but this time she didn't mind; she was too out of breath to carry on a conversation half the time. The air quality wasn't much help in that regard. The imperfections in the asphalt and the way the road sloped up and down were much more noticeable now, and before long her arms had begun to hurt, although at least the gloves kept the handles from digging into her hands too painfully. Well, the scarring underneath probably helped, too.

"I can take one of those for you," Ikusaba offered at one point.

Kirigiri shook her head. "It's fine."

And so they continued in silence, Kirigiri trailing a bit behind.

***

They were still a few miles from their—home? Hideout? Base of operations? Kirigiri still wasn't quite sure how to think of it—when Ikusaba suddenly halted and held up a hand to signal that Kirigiri should stop, too.

"What is it?" Kirigiri asked.

Ikusaba shook her head and turned toward one of the nearby fields. In the silence, Kirigiri realized that she could hear rustling coming from that direction. It could be the wind, or a small animal—all right, maybe several small animals—but Kirigiri had the feeling that it wasn't.

"Stay back," Ikusaba said in a low voice, and Kirigiri barely had time to drop her bags and duck behind a nearby telephone pole before five people in Monobear masks sprang out from among the dying rice plants.

It wasn't the best hiding place, but if she moved, she'd only call more attention to herself. The sun was beginning to set, anyway, so hopefully the lengthening shadows would provide a bit more cover. She craned her neck, a bit uncomfortably, to keep an eye on Ikusaba as best she could.

The way Ikusaba fought was strangely beautiful, Kirigiri found herself thinking, though under the circumstances she really had more important things to think about than the grace and fluidity of Ikusaba's movements and the way she seemed somehow comfortable, in her element, in a way that Kirigiri had hardly seen her since they'd left Hope's Peak. She was thoroughly outnumbered and all of her opponents had guns, but this didn't seem to concern her. She dodged their attacks as though they were nothing and, whenever she found an opening, lashed out with her fists and feet with terrifying accuracy. She even made use of the cans, throwing them at her attackers or using them to give her blows more force.

Before long, one of the attackers was on the ground—unconscious or dead, Kirigiri couldn't tell from her vantage point—and Ikusaba had gotten the gun off of him. She shot one of the others in the head at point-blank range, but that had been the only shot the gun had left, and Ikusaba, of course, had no ammunition of her own. She went after the gun of the one she'd just shot, but one of the remaining enemies got there first.

Ikusaba was a near-perfect soldier, and Kirigiri had seen her do things that no ordinary person could do, but it had been a long and exhausting day, and Kirigiri could see she was starting to flag, reacting just that little bit slower. The enemy clearly noticed too, and two of them rushed her at once from the front. As she was fighting them off, the third crept up on her from behind, gun raised.

Kirigiri's body, for once, reacted before she had consciously weighed up the pros and cons of the situation, and she dashed from her hiding place to fling herself at the third attacker. They both went down, but she had expected that; the Ultimate Despair member's body cushioned her from the worst of the impact. She was about to get up and calculate her next move when there was a loud noise and a sudden, searing pain in her leg and the world went white for a moment.

The next thing she knew, someone was hauling her off of the woman she'd tackled, and she almost lashed out (not that she could have done all that much damage) before realizing it was Ikusaba. With Kirigiri out of the way and the enemy still a little dazed, Ikusaba managed to get hold of the woman's gun and then shoot her with it. The other two enemies had, apparently, already been dispatched while Kirigiri was distracted. Kirigiri put a hand to her leg, and her glove came away soaked with blood. She'd been shot, she realized, in a sort of distant and detached way, as if it had happened to someone else. That was going to be a problem.

Ikusaba looked down at her. "Can you stand?"

"I'm not sure," Kirigiri said.

Ikusaba held out a hand, and Kirigiri took it and hauled herself to her feet.

"There's a house over there," Ikusaba said, pointing to a dingy greyish structure a little way down the road, standing out starkly amidst the fields. "Do you think you can walk to it?"

"Why?" said Kirigiri. "I mean—shouldn't we just go back? It's not that far. I can make it, I think."

"It's almost dark," Ikusaba said. "There may be more of them, and they could sneak up on us more easily now. Besides, your wound needs treatment as soon as possible."

Kirigiri wanted to protest further, just to make the point that she was fine, really, and she wasn’t going to slow them down, but Ikusaba did have a point. “All right,” she said.

Ikusaba took off her jacket, folded it, and handed it to Kirigiri. “Put pressure on the wound,” she said, and got to work gathering up the fallen cans and bags.

***

When they reached the house, they paused outside so that Ikusaba could inspect Kirigiri’s injury in what little was left of the light. She probed the area with firm yet gentle fingers and declared, “Not as bad as it could be. Just a graze, and it didn’t hit any major blood vessels.”

This being done, Ikusaba told Kirigiri to wait inside and not, under any circumstances, to move around or try to help. Kirigiri complied, feeling suddenly too tired to put up even a token show of reluctance. Before Kirigiri quite knew what had happened, Ikusaba had a large metal pot of water (there was a well on the property, apparently) boiling over a small fire outside and was tearing a bedsheet into strips for bandages, which, she explained, she would then sterilize in the boiling water.

“You seem to have a lot of experience with this sort of thing,” Kirigiri said. It wasn’t an observation one would have to be an Ultimate Detective to make, but it was the best she could do at the moment.

Ikusaba shrugged. “On the battlefield, there isn’t always a medical professional on hand when you need one. I’ve learned what I needed to in order to make sure I survived.”

“And that your allies survived?”

Ikusaba looked down, as if the task of sheet-ripping suddenly required her full attention. “Sometimes,” she said at last.

Silence fell again, and after a moment, Ikusaba gathered up her sheet-bandages and went outside to sterilize them.

When the sterilization was finished, Ikusaba knelt over Kirigiri to clean and bandage the wound with a brisk and businesslike efficiency, the act both strangely intimate and strangely impersonal. Which Kirigiri supposed was normal for medical attention—and she’d certainly had her share of it—but it was different when it was a girl her own age, a... classmate? A comrade? A friend?

“Ikusaba?” she said.

“Mukuro is fine,” the other said absently, sitting back to inspect her handiwork.

“When we were at Hope’s Peak, before... before I lost my memory, did we speak much? You and I, I mean?”

Mukuro huffed out a breath that might have been a sigh or the ghost of a humorless laugh. “I didn’t speak to anyone much.”

“Oh.” There was that inexplicable disappointment again.

“But I always... admired you. Your talent, I mean. I thought if anyone was going to find out about what we were doing—about Ultimate Despair—and put a stop to it, it would be you.”

“You seem to have given me far too much credit, then,” Kirigiri said darkly, but Mukuro went on as if she hadn’t heard. She was almost smiling.

“I was always asking Junko if she was sure you wouldn’t notice anything. She used to tease me about it.” Mukuro slipped effortlessly back into her Junko impression, a complete change of voice and mannerism between one sentence and the next. “‘Kirigiri this, Kirigiri that! Your obsession with that disappointing detective is sooooo booooring! If you like her that much why don’t you buy her some Valentine’s chocolates and be done with it!’” Then she cut herself off abruptly, as if she’d said too much.

“I’m sorry,” Kirigiri said quickly. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

Mukuro picked up the discarded bloodstained blazer. “I’m going to go soak this and see if I can get the blood out of it. I could try cleaning your glove too, if you like.”

Kirigiri hesitated for a moment, but it seemed sort of silly to be self-conscious at this point, so she took the glove off and gave it to Mukuro. Mukuro, to her credit, didn’t react at all to the state of Kirigiri’s hand. Of course, she’d probably seen worse. Or maybe she’d already known.

***

Mukuro came back in a little while later, carrying spoons she’d presumably found in the house’s kitchen, and rooted around in the bags until she found two cans that opened with pull-tabs—one of tuna and one of mixed fruit.

“Here,” she said, handing them to Kirigiri.

“I can’t....” Kirigiri began. It didn’t seem right to have them all to herself before they’d even gotten their haul back to the others.

“You’ve lost blood. You need to keep your strength up. Replenish your iron and fluids.”

“Very well, but you should have some too.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Kirigiri knew a polite fiction when she heard it, but she decided not to press the issue.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, between bites, “about earlier. I didn’t mean to bring up—anything you wouldn’t want to remember.”

Mukuro shook her head. “You have a right to be curious about your past. I just wish I had more to tell you than... what I did.” At that last bit, she looked, Kirigiri thought, a bit sheepish, which was not an expression Kirigiri had ever expected to see on her. It was sort of endearing.

“It doesn’t matter now, anyway,” Kirigiri said. “What I thought about you back then, I mean.”

“I don’t think you thought much of anything about me.” Anyone else might have sounded petulant saying that, but Mukuro’s tone was matter-of-fact.

“Well, if what you’ve said is accurate, I didn’t really know you,” Kirigiri said. “Perhaps I didn’t admire your skills as much as you admired mine at the time, but I certainly do now.”

Mukuro looked up, and Kirigiri thought for a moment that she saw surprise in the other girl’s face, though it quickly disappeared, if it had been there at all. “You admire me? After everything I’ve done to you and your friends?”

“It was your efforts which allowed us to escape from Hope’s Peak.”

“From a trap I helped set.”

“But you changed your mind, and you’ve been helping us ever since, and—well, honestly, your talent is more useful out here than most of ours. You’ve saved my life at least twice over tonight alone.”

“It doesn’t make up for what I’ve done.”

“Well, you can’t change what you’ve done in the past,” Kirigiri said, which was trite and almost patronizing, but what else could one really say in this sort of situation? “All you can do is decide what you’re going to do now, and thus far I think you’ve been doing well.”

Silence stretched out between them, and Kirigiri thought that Mukuro might not respond at all, but at last she said, “Thank you. I... I appreciate that.”

***

They had an uncomfortable night’s sleep on the floor (the futon had gone unpleasantly mildewy) and departed again the next morning, after Mukuro had changed the dressing on Kirigiri’s leg and made sure that the injury wasn’t doing anything unexpectedly worrying. Mukuro insisted on carrying all the bags, and Kirigiri, sore and still tired, let her without much of a fight.

When they had almost reached their destination, Kirigiri stopped for a moment, having the inexplicable feeling that something important was coming to an end.

Mukuro, apparently noticing that Kirigiri was no longer following, stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Are you all right? Do you need a rest?”

“No, I’m fine,” Kirigiri said, drawing level with Mukuro. “I just... I wanted to thank you. I wouldn’t have survived this expedition without you.”

“You saved my life too,” Mukuro pointed out. “And that’s why we go out in pairs or groups in the first place, isn’t it? So that we can help each other if danger arises.”

“Yes, but... I don’t know, I wanted to say it before we got back.”

“We’re going back together. You don’t have to talk as though we won’t see each other afterward.”

“Of course. I’m sorry.” What had she been saying? Clearly the lack of proper sleep or the blood loss had made Kirigiri lightheaded and silly.

“In fact,” Mukuro went on, “I think we’ll be spending time together often in the near future. I'll have to check regularly to see how your recovery is progressing. We should have time to talk more while we're at it."

"I look forward to it," said Kirigiri.

It was a start.

* * *

**Coda:**

A little while later, out scavenging again, Mukuro came across something unexpected on a dusty back shelf: a box of Valentine's chocolates. With a small smile, she slipped it into her bag.

"What do you want that for?" Asahina, who was her partner on this particular trip, asked. "I mean, I miss chocolate, believe me, but that stuff is probably all gross by now."

Mukuro ignored her. _I hate to say it, sis_ , she thought, _but I guess you were right about a few things after all_.


End file.
